When Makati Was My Version Of Hell

This is a previouly posted blog. I used to work in Makati but gave up a lucrative corporate job because I couldn't take the daily commute anymore. Believe me, I've tried all kinds of transportation. Heck, I even learned how to drive. It just didn't work for me. 

Whilst working in there,  I discovered Apartment 1B, a cozy resto with good food and a charming doorman/guard named Aga who was a one-time champion whistler in one of Eat Bulaga's crazy music contests. So these days, when I do find myself in Makati's Salcedo Village area, I try to drop by and have a cuppa and a cake. The last one I had was the White Toblerone Cheesecake. 

Here's a an edited version of one of my worst nights getting stuck in Makati. The coffee shop mentioned is not Apartment 1B because they do serve alcohol. Dig in!

☂☁⚡

Makati. Bright lights. Bleak city.

I’m sure many of you will disagree, but for me a rainy pay day Friday night in Makati just about appropriates hell. And Satan, in a plush red velvet chair high up in a penthouse office is directing the traffic. His minions, disguised as taxi drivers, tirelessly circle the concrete jungle, stopping to splash bystanders with murky rainwater before speeding away, with their undecipherable hand signals that could very well mean, “I’m stuck here in hell, fucker, so you should be too!”

I used to work in Malabon, the land of patis, pancit Malabon and relentless flooding. Many of my friends felt I got a first class upgrade when my office transferred to the country’s business capital.  I had my misgivings.

Being a truant Makati girl, I refuse to own a car and drive, despite my company’s standing offer to get a company car. A friend recently described me as a corporate hippie. Someone who refuses to look like and live like she works in this urban haven called Makati. Though I do not report for work in my tsinelas (It’s against company policy as our recently released Employee Handbook declares), I do go to work in jeans and jersey shirts.

But I digress.

On Fridays, our office closes at 5:00 PM. It’s four and a half hours later and here I still am in the coffee shop in our building, ranting silently on my computer. After years of working here, I have had the wisdom to realize that cursing, screaming and thrashing on the wet pavement will not get me home to Quezon City. And fanning this flame of hatred I have towards this place is the fact that this coffee shop, the only place I can get to without being soaked by the torrential rain, does not serve anything with alcohol in it. Not even Java mocha blend with a splash of Green Cross rubbing alcohol.

I feel like flipping everyone here in the coffee shop.

There’s that table of plain janes gossiping about the office beeyotch whose i-pod nearly broke when she dropped it while showing product sample pictures and way too much cleavage to their married expat boss.

The couple seating across me have opened their laptop and are uploading monthsary pictures on their shared Friendster site. Remind me to puke on them later before I leave.

Three salesmen, oblivious to everyone around them, are sharing the sexploits of a colleague who snagged a pretty young thing while on his recent provincial assignment. They all hope he gets STD.

In my head, I am Honey Bunny in the opening scene of Pulp Fiction. I stand on my chair and brandish a wicked looking gun and shout “Each one of you Motherfuckers enjoy your last night in hell! I’m now gonna shoot every fucking last one of you!” With madness in my eyes, I blow the brains out of everyone in the coffee shop, sparing the kindly waiters who look at me with pity. I run amok and have my own weekend party strafing down all the taxis that cross my path.

But I don’t have a gun on me now. Neither do I have the strength to shout as six hours of watching people be happy has drained me of all the fight I have left tonight.

It is nearly 11 PM and the coffee shop is closing. I leave a tip and take a last sip of the now lukewarm cappuccino I ordered three hours ago.

Makati wins tonight.

I drag my peep-toed cold feet on the pavement wishing that I wouldn't have to be here  on the next rainy pay day Friday.